Woman wins £10,000 over NHS boss’s prank
AN NHS worker tricked by her boss into thinking she had forgotten to prepare a three-hour presentation has won £10,000 in compensation.
Carol Hurley went into a panic, delayed important work and spent hours getting ready, only to be told by manager Stella Armstrong that she was “joshing”, an employment tribunal heard.
Bullying
Mrs Hurley, who said she was left in tears and later quit her job, was awarded £9,890 in compensation.
The tribunal judge said targets of office pranks feel they must take them in good humour – but they are actually victims of “unacceptable” behaviour that can be bullying.
Mother-of-two Mrs Hurley joined East Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust as a deputy finance business partner in
October 2016 on £33,000 a year. The following August, at a stressful time, Ms Armstrong decided to prank her, the hearing was told.
She emailed Mrs Hurley to remind her she had a three-hour talk to give to senior management the next day, faking a message from an executive saying the same. Colleagues joined in; one told the 63-year-old she had heard Ms Armstrong ask her to do it.
Mrs Hurley at first did not believe them but began to doubt herself, the panel heard. “She found it extremely stressful. She stopped her already urgent work...and began working on the presentation.”
Only when she left the office to return home and carry on preparing, more than five hours since the prank began, did her boss text to say: “Only joshing !!!! Have a great day.”
Judge Eoin Fowell said: “There is no possible justification for doing that. Like many practical jokes, it was not at all funny.”
Although she was unhappy, and was entitled to resign, the panel said Mrs Hurley tried to carry on as “people feel they must try to take practical jokes in good part”.
But, in November she decided to complain to a senior manager.
The tribunal in Croydon, South
London, heard Mrs Hurley began to be ignored by colleagues. Her files were tampered with, in what the panel called “a particularly disturbing form of revenge or sabotage”.
Ms Armstrong gave her what the tribunal described as an “unduly negative” appraisal, which led to Mrs Hurley lodging a bullying complaint before she resigned in September 2018.
Tears
Judge Fowell said she was unfairly dismissed after “unacceptable” and “dishonest” behaviour.
Mrs Hurley, who now works for Sussex Police, said later: “I was basically bullied. She involved everyone in the office. Everyone else kept asking me ‘Did you do your presentation?’ I ended up in floods of tears.”
The NHS agreed the prank was harassment but said it was not intentional.